Fanfic / Because I Knew You

Because I Knew You and its sequel, What If: Multiverse of Madness: The Clea Cut by Robertdoc is an AU of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting just at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home. When Wanda Maximoff detects and deflects the spell intended to erase all memory of Peter Parker from the wider universe, her initial reaction is to investigate the source in the belief that the spell was a focused attack on her, assuming that someone tried to make her forget Peter because he relates to her efforts to find her children. However, after she realises the truth, Peter unintentionally inspires Wanda to resist the Darkhold, the two eventually forming a close bond that gives Wanda something to live for outside of her attempt to “reclaim” her children. The sequel sees Wanda and Peter joining Strange, Wong and the other sorcerers in trying to protect America Chavez from Clea of the Dark Dimension, which leads to them travelling to other realities and meeting new versions of the Avengers.

These fics are part of their own series; Because I Knew You. They are also part of the author’s Multiverse of Madness Erasure series, which looks at other examples of how Peter and Wanda’s friendship could have affected her actions after Westview.

Because I Knew You contains examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: Unlike in canon, Wanda was able to throw off the Darkhold's corruptive influence before it drove her irreversibly insane.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: The fic begins with Wanda making contact with Peter even though they have barely interacted in the canon films so far, and by the time they travel to Kamar-Taj they all but explicitly state that they consider the other a sibling. As well as this, Wanda goes from hunting America Chavez in canon to one of her protectors.
• Amnesia Missed a Spot: Wanda's powers make her aware of the spell to erase all knowledge of Peter Parker, allowing her to protect herself from what she initially believed was an explicit attack on her rather than a worldwide spell.
• Amicable Exes: Strange ultimately visits Christine Palmer to talk about recent events, Christine assuring Strange that she likes who she is because of their past relationship and he never ‘broke’ anything in her, and Strange in turn apologising for his past mistakes.
• Anti-Magical Faction: Mordo is so fixated by his new crusade that he steals America’s powers with the goal of using them to destroy all magic in the multiverse, even if that means his own death.
• Big Bad Wannabe: In “Clea Cut”, this essentially applies to Maya Hansen of Earth-717. Having inherited control of Stark Enterprises after Tony’s death, Maya has become a member of the new Avengers as Iron Woman, but attempts to become the sole hero of this Earth when 199999-Clea dreamwalks into her 717 counterpart and attacks the rest of the team. However, when Maya confronts 199999-Peter Parker, he manages to defeat her despite the fact that he didn’t have any Stark tech in his suit at this point, and Maya is subsequently killed by Wanda after Peter and Strange manage to hold her down.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Invoked in “Clea Cut” when Mordo claims that Strange deliberately sacrificed Vision and Stark to save himself. While Peter is initially convinced by this claim, he allows Strange to explain later that he mainly lied about seeing a future where they won to offer hope and didn’t deliberately set out to kill Stark in the final clash with Thanos.
• Brain Bleach: When Wanda is manipulated into dreamwalking to Earth-717, she is initially subjected to further hallucinations by Nightmare encouraging her to just take America back as Clea planned, but shakes these hallucinations off when witnessing such moments as the drone-like Vision of Earth-717 or the local Peter Parker trying to kiss her.
• Brought Down to Normal: In the final battle, Mordo steals America and Wanda’s powers, but they are able to rally and reclaim their abilities.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: In “Clea Cut”, after Mordo and Clea have decimated Kamar-Taj, Mordo attacks Clea as part of his further vendetta.
• Commonality Connection: When Peter assumes that "Lizzie" doesn't remember him any more than the rest of the world, the two soon find themselves bonding over how they lost everyone else in their lives after the Snap and literally nobody else was there for them when things went wrong. They also discreetly acknowledge that they might have been part of the reason they lost contact with the other Avengers, as they were each so focused on their bonds with Tony and the Vision respectively that they didn’t spend as much time with the rest of the team.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Brought up in “Clea Cut” when Strange and Clea confront an alternate Donna Strange who’s been on the run from the TVA since she accidentally killed her brother in the drowning accident that killed her 199999 counterpart. By the time they meet, Donna has been stuck in one universe since her stolen tempad was destroyed, and Clea is incredulous that she never thought about putting it back together (Donna attributes that to the Darkhold corrupting her thinking, but she still needed parts from Strange’s home universe to repair it).
• Dance Battler: In the final clash with the Mindless Ones, the powerless sorcerers of Kamar-Taj (along with Peter and America) basically resort to this, dancing along to “Defying Gravity” to distract their enemies until they can get Wanda outside the current hex and restore her magic.
• Depower: During the final clash, Mordo takes away Peter’s powers, but Peter is still able to use his web-shooters to distract Mordo at a crucial moment. While he doesn’t regain his abilities after Mordo’s defeat, Wanda is shown talking with Betty Ross about finding ways to restore Spider-Man’s powers.
• Different World, Different Movies: In “Clea Cut”, when Peter, Strange and America are displaced to Earth-717, after Peter learns that his local counterpart is involved with the local Wanda, he compares the idea of him being involved with his Wanda like that to how Luke must have felt about kissing Leia on Hoth after Return of the Jedi. When 717-Peter comments that they kissed on more planets than that, 199999-Peter considers the implications that the Star Wars films have different plots in their respective worlds. Later, when 199999-Wanda is manipulated by Clea into dreamwalking into her 717-counterpart, 1999999-Peter confirms that this is "his" Wanda by quoting from Wicked, as he and Wanda saw the show just before Strange made contact and he had already confirmed that the show doesn’t exist on Earth-717.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: In “Because I Knew You”, emphasis is placed on how contact with the Darkhold was corrupting Wanda Maximoff to drive her to hunt for her children across the multiverse. It takes learning the reason for the memory spell to erase all knowledge of Peter to give Wanda the necessary emotional kick to throw off the Darkhold's influence, as she left the book behind while visiting New York as a part of her still recognised that the book was too dangerous to be brought back to civilization.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When Clea comes to Earth claiming she "just" wants to kill America to stop future incursions, after she learns that Wanda changed her mind about attacking America because of her friendship with Peter, Clea dismisses the idea that Wanda is that close to Peter just because she's not even having sex with him. Clea explicitly muses that all she'd have to do is kill Peter and Wanda would return to her past course of action, ignoring how Wanda may have genuinely moved past this and is seeking to atone.
• Fate Worse than Death: Clea threatens Wanda into helping her by warning that if Wanda doesn’t help her attack Earth-717, Clea will not only kill 199999-Peter, but then bring his body back and leave it in Wanda’s cell while casting a spell to make her immortal, forcing Wanda to watch her last friend decompose
• The Friends Who Never Hang: This trait basically describes Peter and Wanda’s relationship prior to these events, as they only met briefly at Leipzig (when they were on opposite sides), during the final clash with Thanos and when attending Tony’s funeral, and even then they never really spoke directly. This is the main reason Wanda wonders if she can be there for Peter at first, as while she sympathises with his situation she barely knew him before everything went wrong in their lives.
• A Handful for an Eye: In “Clea Cut”, Peter does this to Clea in the initial confrontation with his webbing. He later does this twice to Maya Hansen of Earth-717, first striking her mask with webbing when she confronts him as Iron Woman and then striking her eyes directly when she lifts the mask to try and get around the webbing.
• Hope Spot: Wanda experiences being rescued and then abandoned by Wong, but it’s soon confirmed that this is just a nightmare created by Clea.
• Honorary True Companion: In “Clea Cut”, after Wanda manages to banish Nightmare and his cohorts to the Dark Dimension, Wong affirms that Wanda can now consider herself part of Kamar-Taj despite her magic operating on different rules to theirs.
• Hypocrite: Strange in particular denounces Mordo as this, considering that he condemned the Ancient One for drawing power from the Dark Dimension but is now working with Clea, a ruling figure in the Dark Dimension (to be ‘fair’, Mordo planned to betray Clea at a certain point from the beginning). In the final battle, Mordo’s enemies all acknowledge how apt it is that his final fate will be to be stripped of magic like he did to so many others, but they have enough mercy not to comment on it.
• I Know You Know I Know: When Wanda initially moves in to Peter’s building, he tentatively recognises her as the Scarlet Witch when she introduces herself as his new neighbour, "Lizzie". However, since Peter believes she wouldn't remember him any more than anyone else, he doesn't bring it up, assuming that she's here on some mission for the Avengers, and Wanda doesn't correct his assumption even though she can read enough of his mind to know that he knows who she is, choosing to just offer him emotional support.
• Identity Amnesia: After Mordo has been drained of magic, Wanda wipes his memory of his past, telling Strange, Wong and the other sorcerers that it’s up to them what they do with him, as opposed to her turning Agatha into Agnes full-time.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • In “Because I Knew You”, while Wanda's impromptu visit to Peter Parker leads to her destroying the Darkhold on her own as he reminds her what she truly stands for as an Avenger, she still forces Wong to take her to the 'original' Darkhold on Wundagore Mountain. Wanda's intention on this trip is to stop the Darkhold corrupting her or others again, but she starts experiencing visions of what could happen if she took America's powers and tried to claim her children again, although she ultimately snaps out of it on her own when she experiences a vision of killing Peter when he was trying to talk her down.
  • In “Multiverse of Madness: The Clea Cut”, the plot opens with the Masters of the Mystic Arts preparing to defend America Chavez from a dangerous witch (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), except that here Wanda is one of the defenders rather than the attacker. Later, when the confrontation escalates, Strange can only take key action in his reality of origin by dreamwalking into the corpse of Defender Strange, although on this occasion he is fighting Mordo rather than Wanda.
  • When various heroes travel to Earth-717, one of the differences between worlds is that in this reality Stephen Strange’s sister Donna survived the fall into a pond that killed her in this reality. As a result, Stephen never became a doctor, but he and Donna still became students at Kamar-Taj.
• It's All About Me:
  • In “Because I Knew You”, after detecting the spell that erased all memory of Peter from the world, Wanda comes to investigate the spell because she believed that it was a deliberate attack against her rather than a generic event affecting everyone else.
  • In “Clea Cut”, Mordo justifies everything in the name of his own crusade, to the extent of concluding that it would have been better if the Snap’s victims had stayed dead. Later on, the residents of Earth-717 consider themselves ‘better’ than Earth-199999 as they were able to move on after the Snap, but Peter in particular calls them out on focusing on the living rather than trying to help those who were lost.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The memory spell that erased all knowledge of Peter Parker from the world is still intact; Wanda is the only one able to resist the spell when it was cast, although she is able to restore Strange’s memories later on, and the two subsequently explain the situation to Wong.
• Last of His Kind: In “Clea Cut”, Doctor Strange travels to an alternate reality where he meets an alternate version of his sister Donna. He had previously learnt that there were realities where he and Donna lived beyond the accident that killed her in his reality, but there is only one reality where Donna survived that accident and Stephen died instead.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Wanda’s choice of alias as ‘Lizzie’ is obviously a reference to Elizabeth Olsen (by contrast, Peter has been calling himself ‘Benjamin’ after his uncle).
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: When America sends Peter, Wanda and Strange through various realities, they each end up witnessing embarrassing worlds for all three; a world where Wanda and Stephen are married and doing a stage magic show, a world where Wanda is basically a cartoonish villain, and a world where Spider-Man is a Broadway show known for the dancers having accidents. All three immediately ask the other two to act as though they never saw that.
• Like Brother and Sister: While Peter and Wanda dance around the term, when both compare the idea of them being a couple to how Luke and Leia must have felt after learning their true relationship, on top of Wanda briefly thinking of Pietro when talking with Peter, it’s clear that they have come to see each other as siblings.
• Look Behind You: Invoked when Mordo is taunting the decapitated zombie-Strange and Strange reveals that this time around he was just the distraction; Mordo is so shocked that he doesn’t look around in time to stop the alternate Donna Strange and the displaced Clea attack him from behind via a Tempad.
• Man Bites Man: At one point, America is reduced to biting Mordo’s wrist so he’ll let her go.
• Meaningful Echo: When Wanda admits that she knows the truth, she says "Peter Peter Peter" in a similar manner to how Norman Osborn repeated Peter's name as a taunt, but Wanda repeats the name as an assurance that having someone there who loves him can help him get over the pain of those memories.
• Morality Chain: Hearing Peter talk about May was this for him helps Wanda realise that she avoided searching for a reality with Vision and her sons in it because she knew that Vision would be ashamed of what she’d done even if he wouldn’t outright condemn her for it.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: The Vision of Earth-717 seems to be the ‘Zoidberg’ to the other Avengers, as he’s basically been reduced to a drone compared to his original self, lacking any real emotion and apparently staying at the tower rather than acting in the field; 717-Strange explicitly describes Vision as “a retiree [they] let hang around out of pity” and Vision acknowledges that’s an accurate assessment.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Albeit in a vision rather than something she actually did, but Wanda is snapped out of the Darkhold’s attempts to re-take control of her when she experiences a vision of killing Peter when he was trying to comfort a panicked Billy and Tommy while still expressing faith that she was a good person.
  • In “Clea Cut”, Strange encounters a version of his sister Donna who survived the accident in the frozen lake that killed her in his reality, but this is because she accidentally killed her version of him by kicking him in the head while they were underwater. After she went on the run from the TVA, Donna ended up killing the Sorcerer Supreme of another reality before she realised the man was that reality’s version of Stephen, which led to her Then Let Me Be Evil moment.
• Never My Fault: In “Clea Cut”, Mordo basically blames Strange and everyone else for the fact that he’s been driven to work with Clea, rather than just accept that he’s fallen and become the villain.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Wanda observes that the Darkhold made a mistake trying to amplify her negative emotions after her time with Peter reminded her of what she wants to be, as now that enhanced negativity is focused on the Darkhold itself.
• No Man of Woman Born: In “Clea Cut”, Mordo’s final line of defence is a magical barrier that he proclaims no living being can cross… which isn’t a problem for Strange as he’s currently dreamwalking into the corpse of his other self.
• Oh, Crap!: Peter basically says this to himself when he impulsively suggests that he and ‘Lizzie’ go to see Wicked and he only realises afterwards that the subject matter might hit too close to home for Wanda in the sense of it being about a good witch who was condemned as evil by the public.
• Pep-Talk Song: “Defying Gravity” from Wicked serves as this to Wanda when she’s captured by Mordo after Peter and America’s powers have been taken.
• Point of Divergence:
  • The original change is because Wanda sensed the spell to erase all memory of Peter Parker and was able to protect herself from being affected by it.
  • In Multiverse of Madness: Clea Cut, this idea is basically deconstructed as there is no single point where the history of Earth-717 differed from the "prime" reality onwards but various different moments. Examples include Tony turning himself in to prison after Ultron was destroyed, Rogers killing Stark in a PTSD-induced breakdown in the fight in Siberia, and General Ross making a deal with Thanos to kill the ‘lesser’ half of Earth (i.e. the half that disagreed with Ross’s methods) once he had the Mind Stone (obviously Thanos just killed half of Earth at random anyway).
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Wanda spends the first few chapters as the only person on her Earth still aware that Peter Parker is Spider-Man apart from Peter himself, leaving her in an awkward position as she and Peter weren't close before the spell and now she's just become the only person aware he ever existed.
• Self-Imposed Exile: Although offered a place in Kamar-Taj, the alternate Donna returns to her destroyed world with Clea to work on protecting the multiverse away from another reality that she might endanger.
• Sequel Hook: “Clea Cut” ends with a few;
  • 717-Wanda and Clea are apparently in Peter-Two’s world while 717-Peter seems to have been sent to Peter-Three’s Earth, creating the possibility of the three Spider-Men having another team-up.
  • Although Wanda has helped Peter make contact with MJ and Ned and set himself up as a student at NYU, with classmates including Miles, Gwen and Harry, she is also working with Betty Ross to try and restore Spider-Man’s powers.
  • The Multiverse is still potentially in danger from future incursions, with a figure that is clearly Kang the Conqueror approaching Clea and Donna about joining his planned "Dynasty" of worlds to survive what’s coming, while Wanda finds herself confronted by the restored Agatha Harkness.
• Shout-Out: Reference to Wicked is a key point in both fics;
  • In “Because I Knew You”, Peter and Wanda first admit their knowledge of each other's secrets after watching the play when Wanda and Peter are each struck by the similarities between them and Elphaba, Wanda obviously drawing analogies to how Elphaba was condemned as the villain and Peter comparing his current secret to how Elphaba never told Glinda the truth about her survival.
  • In “Clea Cut” after Wanda is manipulated into dreamwalking into her counterpart in another world, the already-displaced Peter of her world confirms her identity by singing lines from Wicked; he had already established that show doesn't exist in Earth-717, so the "local" Wanda wouldn't understand the reference.
  • Aside from Wicked, it’s stated that several 80s horror movies were inspired by contact with the Dark Dimension, such as dreamwalking inspiring Freddy Krueger; Clea mentions that the Dark Dimension is still earning royalties from a writer who created a series about “a Darkhold ripoff and a guy with a chainsaw hand”.
  • "Clea Cut" features more than one Star Wars reference when Peter and Wanda learn that their counterparts on Earth-717 are married; as 199999-Peter and Wanda have come to see each other as siblings, the two compare their reaction to the idea of their other selves being married to the thought of how Luke and Leia must have felt about their kiss on Hoth after learning about their real relationship.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: While the Darkhold is never shown explicitly talking to Wanda, she eventually orders it to leave her alone when her time with Peter helps her get over her darker thoughts.
• Spotting the Thread: Once away from the Darkhold’s influence, Wanda starts to consider how only her earlier visions of her lost sons showed them actually asking for help where her recent visions reveal they’re fine, suggesting that the Darkhold was influencing her earlier glimpses and now thinks she’s so far gone she wouldn’t care.
• Straw Nihilist: In “Clea Cut” Mordo seems to have become this, content to destroy all magic throughout the multiverse and remove the ‘lie’ of hope it brings even when he knows that means he has to destroy himself, unconcerned if that loss of magic will destroy worlds because Mordo himself won’t be there to see it.
• That Man Is Dead: A complex version features when Peter, Strange and America visit Earth-717, where the post-Snap Avengers include a version of the Vision who was reactivated after the destruction of the Mind Stone. Lacking any ability to feel emotion, this version of the Vision encouraged the Wanda of Earth-717 to move on to Peter Parker, but when 199999-Wanda dreamwalks into her 717-counterpart, 717-Vision admits that even though he encouraged "his" Wanda to move on because he couldn't feel anything for her in his current state, there was enough of the old Vision left in him that he wanted her to be happy, and he often watches recordings of their past time together to try and remind himself of what he felt back then.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: This is basically the justification of Clea and Donna Strange for their actions; after Clea witnessed so many of her other selves doing better via dreamwalking, and Donna was hunted by the TVA through various alternate realities after killing her brother by accident, they each ultimately decide to give in and be the villain.
• Trust Password: After Wanda is manipulated by Clea and Nightmare into dreamwalking into her Earth-717 counterpart, the previously-displaced 199999-Peter confirms this is “his” Wanda by quoting Wicked, having previously learnt that the show doesn’t exist on Earth-717.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Several in “Clea Cut”;
  • Several characters are angry when Strange is forced to admit that he didn’t check as many futures as he claimed, to the extent that he deliberately misled others because he was guaranteeing a future where he survived to be brought back by the Snap, even when that meant that Vision and Stark would die.
  • 199999-Peter is particularly outraged to learn that the Avengers of Earth-717 basically chose to let everyone killed in the Snap stay dead and only bring Thanos and his minions back to life so that the world could see the Black Order get punished.
• What You Are in the Dark: Wanda initially just came to New York in the belief that the spell that erased all knowledge of Peter Parker from the rest of the world was something to do with her own current efforts to find her children. However, when she reads Peter's nightmare and learns what really motivated the spell, away from the Darkhold's corruptive influence Wanda finds herself wanting to stay and comfort him even when they barely knew each other before the spell, recognising their similarities.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • When Wanda admits the truth of her recent activities to Peter, he immediately assures that basically anyone would have given in to what the Darkhold offered, but what makes Wanda a hero is that she was ultimately able to reject it.
  • When Clea and the demon Nightmare capture 199999-Wanda, they subject her to hours of nightmarish visions of her remaining allies (Peter, Strange, America, and even Vision) basically telling Wanda that she would have killed them all eventually if she didn't cause their deaths indirectly. Although Wanda is eventually so broken that she agrees to dreamwalk to Earth-717 to help Clea capture America, it only takes a few minutes of encouragement from the 717 version of Vision and the previously-displaced 199999-Strange (as well as an earlier talk with the 199999-Peter) to remind Wanda that she wants to be better, helping her turn against Clea.
  • Later on, Wong, America and Strange do this to a depowered Peter and the insane Donna Strange of another universe, Wong and America affirming that Peter Parker saved people while Spider-Man was just the means by which he did it and Donna is still the same sister Strange lost where it counted.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Just when the displaced heroes have returned to their world and America seems to be talking Clea down, Mordo stabs Clea in the back and takes America’s powers for himself with the goal of destroying magic across the multiverse.

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